Last week, I wrote about my childhood fantasies of athletic accomplishment in the context of Sidney Crosby's return to the NHL. But sports were not the only thing that swept up my youthful imagination.

I was a relatively strange child. My family likes to tease me about my respective fear of clowns and butterflies, but even weirder than that is this: I loved electoral politics. Even at a very young, I was captivated by the experience of watching as numbers poured in for the different parties.

To be sure, this enthusiasm was not unrelated to my sports obsession--I relished the competitive aspects of elections, the fact that there were winners and losers, and the sense that the stakes seemed so high.

Long before I had a thorough grounding in the philosophical underpinnings of political parties and leaders, I had a notion of who the good guys were: the NDP. Of course, this was pure socialization. My parents voted for the party and so I cheered for it. This, too, coalesced with my attitude to sports. I was a perpetual backer of the underdog and the NDP was the eternal underdog. Even as a child, I never imagined that the party would win the election. Rather, I clung to every seat, fantasizing about what it would mean to win forty or fifty in the House of Commons.

As I grew, I came to understand the social, political, and economic world for myself. This drew me both towards and away from the NDP. My socialist inclination obviously taught me that the party was indeed the most viable option for my vote come election season. And so, NDP is how I voted, often going to considerable efforts to ensure that my ballot would be cast in a riding in which it had the genuine potential to elect an NDP candidate. (I should add that this would not be necessary in the more authentically democratic proportional representation model of politics.)

At the same time, I have become increasingly aware of the limitations of the NDP in regards to its critique of status quo politics in Canada. It is not an anti-capitalist party. In the last provincial election, I voted left of the NDP, knowing my vote was in vain.

Nevertheless, in the absence of alternatives, I continue to support the party. And so, as I'm sure you can imagine, my long-entrenched, realist, cynical understanding of it's limited potential was all but obliterated during the last federal election.

As is my wont, I spent that election holed up in front of the television, anxiously (and I don't mean rhetorically--I'm talking visceral, heart-pounding, blood pressure rising, palms sweating tension) watching the votes flood in. Of course, the Conservatives pulled in a majority government even as the NDP rocketed to 102 seats. Still, something remarkable had happened. The party that (sort of) represented my political beliefs had become an actual contender! My more naive side--no doubt produced in part through the experience of watching underdog teams actually pull off upset victories in the world of sport--actually felt hope (much as it did, despite myself, in seeing Barack Obama win the American Presidency).

It was hope built on a tenuous foundation. The new found success of the NDP was not the product of a national shift to the left premised on a growing distaste for the inequities caused by neoliberal capitalism. That was what I wanted it to be, but it was not what it was. Rather, the NDP's success was the product of two simple and related contingent factors.

The first of these was the tremendous charisma of leader Jack Layton. The second was the increasingly untenable organization of federal politics in Quebec.

Quebec is the most left-leaning region of the country, yet the only viable progressive federal party in the province has been the Bloc Quebecois, a French-Canadian nationalist party with little incentive to work in concert with other federalist parties. As the enthusiasm for separatism has waned, so too has the relevance of the Bloc.

The 2011 election was a perfect storm. Quebec was seeking a new leftist alternative, and Jack Layton, himself born in Quebec, child of a popular politician, charismatically offered himself forward in that role. The result was 59 seats for the NDP in Quebec and the sense that the party's fortunes had finally shifted.

And then Layton passed away.

Now, here we are, just under a year after the party's great triumph, with a freshly chosen leader.

There was little suspense, really, over who that leader would be. Understanding the nature of the hand that feeds them, the NDP selected Thomas Mulcair, a popular MP from Quebec. On the surface, this choice could not be more logical, given the context I have just described. Unfortunately, it is a catastrophic miscalculation.

There are two reasons why the NDP has made a terrible mistake. The first is that it believes that a French-Canadian candidate will buttress their base of support in Quebec. Superficially, this makes sense. The problem with this line of thought is that it underestimates the extent to which the party's success in the province was based upon a cult of personality, not identity politics. Mulcair is not (and never will be) Jack Layton, and the next election will see different political conditions.

The second problem flows directly from the first. Because Jack Layton cannot be replaced, not oneof the candidates up for NDP leadership would have been able to sustain the party's success. There is three quarter's of a century's worth of electoral evidence for this. The most important quality for the party to consider in regards to picking a leader was policy (or at least, it should have been). The party's role is as the 'conscience' of parliament, as the party that introduces progressive policies, even if they are only ever implemented by other parties that appropriate them. This is unsatisfying, but not insignificant.

However, because of the desire to reproduce the success of Layton in Quebec, the party has chosen, for all intents and purposes, a Liberal as their leader. They have moved toward centre. In my mind, there is no perceptible difference now between them and Bob Rae's Liberals. The two parties might as well merge. Such a manoeuvre--the shift to centre--whether it involves a merger of the left or not--is the death of the last vestige of anti-capitalism in NDP policy. It signals a shift to a U.S.-style system that offers no alternatives whatsoever to neoliberal globalization.

And so, in one stroke, the party has sacrificed its position as national conscience, even as it faces the prospect of electoral slippage.

It's enough to make one long for those bygone days of underdog status and perpetual failure. At least then there was something to hope for.

When I was a child, I often imagined myself as a star athlete. High school, college, professional, it didn't matter. I didn't have a video game system, so I would create the scenarios in my head--whole seasons that I would play out in my basement, meticulously recording the schedules of the teams involved and the statistics that they (through me) would accrue.

I was captivated, not merely by the playing of the games, but also by the aura attached to them. By the sense that they meant something incredibly important. So, in the course of my play, in addition to trying to put the ball in the basket, or complete the touchdown pass, I would also high five fans and teammates, and answer question from the press.

These fantasies of athletic success are still with me. They linger in the recreational sports I play, infusing them with meaning and value, fuelling my lust for competition and validating the significance of my occasional victories.

This is a very long-winded way of saying that I understand how difficult it must have been for Sidney Crosby to even contemplate the idea of retiring from his professional hockey career. I suspect that in his childhood, he entertained similar fantasies. Unlike me, though, he has not been confronted with the disillusionment of failure and the consequent deconstruction of the meaning of sport that, for me, followed. The kid was and is a star. His life has been a series of affirmations--of his personal worth and of the importance of sport. (This may have been different if Crosby had been born American; as a hockey-playing Canadian, he is at the pinnacle of athletic importance in this country.)

Much like LeBron James, Crosby was anointed as the chosen one while he was still a teenager. He was seemingly predestined to be one of the great athletes of his time. And he, like James, fulfilled that promise. He was (and is) beloved by fans and, no doubt, bolstered by their love.

But, as often happens in sporting life, he got hurt. And he missed time: 102 games. His injury was not to his arms or legs or chest; it was to his head. Specifically, to his brain.

Oddly, it seems our society has only recently awakened to the realization that head injuries are extremely dangerous. (Odd because the significance of brain trauma should be obvious and intuitive.) These days, ESPN's injury expert Stephania Bell likes to say that there is no such thing as a "mild" concussion. Studies have revealed that repeated head injuries have lead to the onset of the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the symptoms of which range from memory loss to dementia. In other words, repeated concussions can often cause serious brain damage, whether or not symptoms manifest in the short term.

The problem for Crosby, I imagine (because, of course, this is only my own personal reading of Crosby's dilemma), is that the repeated blows he suffered are not the only way in which he has been hurt. If it was, basic logic would dictate that he never play hockey again. He is an exceptionally wealthy young man who has already accomplished much in his field. The possibility still exists for him to have a fulfilling life, free of significant risk.

My fear is that Crosby was a little boy like me. He played because he loved to and because sports seemed to matter. And, as he kept playing, he found that it did matter. That people loved him because of how he played. That he was as important as he imagined he deserved to be. When he was injured, that went away. Not immediately, but slowly, and steadily. Those desperate for his return, originally so distraught at his absence, began to look elsewhere for heroes. And others stepped forward to take his place. Sports Illustrated, for instance, recently declared, "Long one of the NHL's best, the Penguins' Evgeni Malkin has emerged from the injured Sidney Crosby's shadow as the finest player in the world."

This is the way of sporting culture. It grants the sense of omnipotence, but then it snatches it away. I think this is why Michael Jordan kept coming back, trying to recapture a feeling he felt was suddenly lost. It's an impossible goal and an unfortunate impulse, of course, because bodies are fragile. They break, or at best, wear down. There is always someone younger, newer, springier offering himself up as the vessel for collective desire.

Sidney Crosby may never again be the chosen one. People will care about how he plays and will comment on it. Fans will cheer for him. But he will never be what he was to them.

I don't think he knows that, though. I think that for Crosby, the pain in his head over losing the connection with fans and teammates is greater than the discomfort caused by his injuries and the fear of further damage.

I think that's why he's coming back.

I think, if I were him, that I might return too, even though it is a terrible choice, likely one that will lead to more severe injuries and the possible loss of what might otherwise be a normal, healthy life.

I don't blame him for it. This does not mean that there is no one to blame. There is something perverse about a culture that makes doing something that has no inherent meaning or utility so important that a person will literally risk his life to continue doing it.

As I think I have been making clear, I don't think that Crosby's psychology is exceptional. Rather, I think his exceptional circumstances cast in sharp relief the predicament of all iconic athletes: they are the bearers of the hopes and aspirations of millions of people who were children like me. This privilege comes with a cost: for this fantasy of of purpose to sustain itself, the stakes must be high. If the players acted like the games they played were meaningless, then the fantasy would collapse (think of Vince Carter's refusal to play hard at the end of his tenure with the Toronto Raptors, and the resulting fury of fans that has yet to fully abate, so many years later). No, an athlete's responsibility is to treat sport as sacred--they must be willing to sacrifice completely for it.

What I think Crosby does not realize, as I have explained, is that it is too late for him to reap the rewards. The meaning of sport will persist, but in the body of another.

I was lucky. I did not make it as an athlete. I didn't even come close. I had to find personal worth in something other than sport. The betrayal of my childhood self was the salvation of the adult.

As a sporting culture, however, we are still governed by the dreams and desires of the child. It is the Crosbys, too talented to find the fortune of failure, who pay the price, whether the cost is the body or a sense of personal worth.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a comment on a post I wrote about Jeremy Lin that got me thinking about the question of sports spectatorship in the abstract. The commenter wrote:

I generally view the time I devote to spectator sports as proof of one of my many character weaknesses; but being able to learn about Gramsci's definition of hegemony in your post ("the widespread acceptance as common sense of ideas that legitimize the power of some in society over others") is proof of the opposite. Thanks a lot, Nathan!

There is, I think, much to be gleaned from this. First, we have the issue of whether watching sport is indeed "a character [weakness]." Second, there is the question of whether there is some redeeming quality to sport spectatorship. These are problems that, although seemingly secondary to the day-to-day existence of my reader, are absolutely central to my own experience.

My professional life (such as it is) is as an aspiring academic, currently working on a doctorate. While the department in which I work is broad in its scope (Social and Political Thought), my own research concentrates on the study of sport, with a particular emphasis on spectatorship itself. I have taught in courses on the socio-cultural analysis of sport and written academic texts on the subject.

What I am trying to say is that the question of whether sport is "a character [weakness]," or vice, is absolutely critical to my daily life. Which is to say that I should probably have a neat, logical, and compelling answer. But, I'm afraid, I don't.

For some, this question may not seem like a question at all. What's wrong with watching (and playing) sports?. Much could be written in response to this pivotal query, but I will try to keep my explanation relatively brief

The contention has been made, justly, that the very notion of competition, central to all sport is anti-social. It teaches us to act as Darwinistic individuals rather than members of a broad and inclusive community focused on the interests of the collectivity. (This is particularly true in individual sports, but even team sports retain these dynamics in their oppositional format and the internal struggles that occur over playing time and primacy.) This is a compelling case, and I have friends who resist playing, let alone watching, sport for this reason. I do not dispute the premise of this position.

Another problem, not applicable to all forms of sport, is the question of violence. This is, in a sense, an extension of the first point. Much sport is competition taken to an extreme. Violent sports teach not only to privilege the self over the other, but that it is acceptable to physically dominate an opponent in order to achieve this end. I have written about this issue before in the context of high school football. Currently, it is in the news again with the NFL's bounty scandal, which raises the question of what level of violence is appropriate in a sport that is predicated upon it in the first place. This is a position that I find to be nearly unimpeachable. Sport that teaches and endorses violence does not have a place in the theoretical society in which I want to live.

If we step back from sport proper, and look at spectatorship itself, other issues emerge. The spectatorship of college basketball and football relies on the exploitation of labour. Watching professional sport means embroiling oneself in a world of spectacle (distraction from more pressing social and political issues) and advertising. It also funnels capital into the coffers of mega corporations. Indeed, even being a fan--such a pure and noble occupation according to Bill Simmons (note: the links to most of Simmons' older columns in which he explicitly outlines his rules for fandom are broken. Blame ESPN.)--is fraught with complication.

Fandom produces miniature national communities that follow a strict "us against them" logic. While the community of fans seems on one level to produce comraderie and act as a source of meaning, by the same token it also relies upon an opponent against whom the team defines itself. In this way, fandom teaches what has been called a Manichean--good vs. evil--way of thinking that is not, in my mind, unrelated to broader destructive ways of thinking that continue to be so prevalent in our world.

The above is merely a thumbnail sketch of some of the problems with sport. Countless posts, or books, could be written on each, and on others I have not even touched upon. This, however, should suffice to demonstrate why it is difficult for me to reject the claim that sport is a vice.

Clearly, it is.

This may seem to be a resolution to the question at hand. Logically, it is. The problem with sport, though, is that logic has little to do with popularity. This is certainly true in my own life. Despite all that I have said above--and I believe what I have said--I still love sport. It is still, as loathe as I am to admit it, one of the principle sources of meaning and pleasure in my life.

I play sports (softball, basketball, volleyball, currently) and look forward to games all week. I watch on television and still live and die with the fates of the teams with which I identify. I even consume sports media, and not merely in a watchdog capacity. I play fantasy sports and make transactions daily, often spending ages pondering the moves I will make.

This is not the product of some kind of in-born natural inclination. I was socialized--taught--to love these games. I was given balls and bats and sticks to play with when I was young and was shown how to use them. I watched games on television with my father and learned who to cheer for. Why I was cheering for them didn't really come up.

Sport has been paralleled to religion, and I believe this is why the analogy is so pertinent: both are systems of meaning that are taught early and come to structure desire and purpose.

I have learned to accept that I am stuck with my sports passion. To repress it would be to repress a now fundamental part of myself. To give it free reign, however, would be to eschew my own system of ethics. This is a delicate balance that I constantly try to strike--a dialectic, tension, contradiction, hypocrisy.

Is there a lesson in all this? I think there is, and I think it is the point that my reader made: perhaps the redemption for those of us socialized into simultaneous obsession and discomfort with sport is that it is an arena we can learn from. There is genuine value to immersion in what is perhaps the most popular form of recreation in North America today.

There is value to be found in staying involved: we can remain participants in the conversation that is sporting culture and by participating, seek to alter its terms. This is not simply a noble quest--it would be pathetically disingenuous to suggest that there isn't pleasure in it. But, as my reader asserts, maybe through this pursuit of pleasure we can gain surprising bursts of enlightenment. Perhaps, balance itself is the key. Instead of embracing sport as it is or rejecting it outright, we need to play and watch while experiencing the struggle.

The alternative is to become ascetic--to disavow and reject. But what does this accomplish or change? Little, I think.

This is the power of the dialectic: through the contradiction, something new can be born.

On the eve of Super Tuesday, I felt it would only be appropriate for me to dip briefly into U.S. Presidential politics. I have only a few comments on the Republican frontrunners Romney and Santorum.

Romney's status as favourite is nearly absurd beyond belief when one breaks down his credentials and the context of this campaign. I will begin with the latter. As surely everyone is aware, this election season occurs in the context of a suffering economy on the heels of an economic crisis and recession. While there are signs that the economy is beginning to recover, it is clear that this is the issue that will and should dominate the election between President Obama and the winner of the Republican primaries.

Now, what of Romney? He is a man who has made an obscene fortune as a corporate raider. That is, he earned the wealth that has allowed him to viably run for office by engaging in precisely the sort of behaviour that was a precipitating factor in the economic crisis in the first place. On top of this, while it is debated whether he himself has used Cayman Island accounts as tax shelters, it is clear that he has helped clients to do so he has also been found to have avoided taxation by harbouring his money in offshore shelters. In this sense, he has literally been complicit in theft from the government he intends to lead. This is the man who currently appears to be the favourite to challenge Obama.

Mitt Romney

Santorum is no better. He is choosing the time-honoured Republican strategy of distracting from the pressing issues of the day by raising the question of family values. This has served him well in the Republican primary, but it will likely prove disastrous if he is fortunate enough to face Obama head-to-head. He is choosing an issue that will alienate moderate voters (particularly his stance on women's reproductive rights--namely that they shouldn't have any) at the expense of one that will catalyse them in his direction (the argument that the nation's economy has suffered through Obama's stewardship). This is the man I hope wins the Republican nomination precisely because he seems incapable of winning the election itself.

Rick Santorum

There is, however, a candidate in the Republican primaries who is a logical choice to lead the party and the nation. He is a man who the conservative right, the Tea Party and even some leftists speak favourably of. He is a consistent advocate of policies that have become increasingly popular in the last forty years--he simply takes them to a logical conclusion that most have yet to reach. His name is Ron Paul and I am terrified of him.

Now, don't get me wrong. Ron Paul will not win the Republican nomination. He doesn't think he will win the nomination. He is campaigning strictly to use the pulpit it provides to disseminate his ideas. It is likely he is also using it to pave the way for the future nomination of his son, the Kentucky senator Rand Paul.

Ron Paul

So, what does Ron Paul believe and why is he so appealing to so many different segments of society? Again, I will begin with the second question first (just to mess with you). Paul's appeal lies in the fact that most people can pick something out of his platform that they can get on board with. Unlike conventional Republican candidates like Romney and Santorum, Paul does not strictly follow the party line.

The party line is basically reducible to a fusion between neoliberal economic policy--slashing government regulations and taxation--, imperialistic foreign policy designed to defend U.S. interests, and conservative social policy--the discourse of traditional family values that amounts to little more than racism, patriarchy, and homophobia (to be fair, these are the traditional values on which American society was founded).

Paul departs from these positions in a number of respects. Perhaps most strikingly, he completely rejects the idea that the U.S. should be involved in military imperialism. That means he explicitly calls for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Given the centrality of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to George W. Bush's administration, this can indeed be viewed as a dramatic shift. Not surprisingly, this position appeals to those on the left and centre who rejected these wars in the first place (for instance, see this favourable coverage on Democracy Now).

Indeed, in a strange way, Ron Paul exists at the very centre of American politics. He is the embodiment of the thread that unites Democrats and Republicans taken to its logical extreme. This is what Paul means when he says, "We are all Austrians now." Of course, this statement is disorienting to most Americans, who have no idea what he is talking about. But, he is largely correct.

The Austrians Paul refers to are a school of economic thought originating with the theorist Friedrich Hayek. Hayek's ideas entered the mainstream of U.S. economic and political thought care of the university of Chicago economist Milton Friedman. Friedman's ideas, in turn, have become economic orthodoxy in the United States and have been referred to as Neolclassical, neoliberal, or simply free marked economics.

(It should be noted that some make the case that Paul's Austrian roots are less orthodox, instead running through Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. I think this is an exaggeration of the divergence of these views. More importantly, in this famous quote, I think what he is really talking about is the shift from Keynesian economic policy (the welfare state) to neoliberal economics.)

At the core of this system of thought is the notion that capitalism produces both freedom and economic well-being for all. The catch, though, is that this is only possible as long as the market is unfettered by government involvement in nearly any form. Since the Reagan era, this concept has impacted every U.S. presidential regime, including the Democratic ones, although clearly, not always to the near-absolute degree sought buy Friedman (a good, accessible resource on Friedman's thought is Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine). What this has meant is that an emphasis on tax cuts and shrinking government has become a hallmark of U.S. political culture. Even the fictitious President Bartlet of The West Wing, almost the archetype for a left-liberal American leader, advocate the free market and neoliberal economic policies.

What makes Paul both different from past Presidents since Reagan and yet simultaneously the most identifiable with what unites them all is the consistency of his thought. He takes those economic principles and applies them to every facet of his policy (except, of course, for women's reproductive rights. Hmmm.). Just as governments should not involve themselves in the economy, so too should they remove themselves from every other arena of American life. This is why he opposes imperialism abroad, just as it is why he thinks governments have no place to regulate drug use or ban gay marriage. It is also why he rejects civil rights legislation. Indeed, it is why he largely rejects government itself. He is a genuine libertarian.

It is difficult to overstate how frightening the implications of this system of thought are. Paul's brand of libertarianism provides no provisions for the mitigation of power disparities. Although his system is predicated on the notion of absolute freedom, in practice it means freedom for the few and unfreedom for most. After all, what is freedom but the ability to make choices?

We have already seen neoliberal economics produce increasing and dramatic income disparities culminating in the one percent versus ninety-nine percent dynamic that has inspired the Occupy movement. Paul's libertarianism would simply exacerbate these trends, leading to a society in which only the super rich would retain genuine options.

Ron Paul will not be given the opportunity to make this world a reality. However, if those on the left and centre, disgusted by conventional Republican politics, continue to talk themselves into the more appealing aspects of his libertarian beliefs, is is conceivable that, some day, his son might. This is why those on the left who are alienated by a political system that seems to provide no real alternative to the profoundly discouraging status quo need to remain actively engaged in the political process.

After all, hard as it may be to believe, there is a fate worse than Romney.